In recent years, wireless client devices have emerged as a fast-growing market. As one example, a network device may use communicate via a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). Among the various WLAN technologies, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 standard is the dominating technology and is frequently used for WLANs.
Client devices within WLANs communicate with access points in order to obtain access to one or more network resources. An access point, referred to as an “AP,” is a digital device that operates as a gateway for a client device to establish a connection (e.g., a communicative coupling) with one or more networks (e.g., the Internet, an intranet, etc.). For example, an AP may be implemented as a wireless AP (WAP), which is configured to communicate wirelessly with one or more client devices as well as communicate with a networked device associated with the one or more networks, such as a controller for example, through a wired connection.
Client devices associate with an AP (“the associated AP”) and thereafter receive communications over the network from the associated AP. Each associated AP transmits network communications to the appropriate client device and also transmits beacons at regular intervals. The beacons are received by all client devices within range of the AP regardless of whether the client devices are associated with the AP. A “beacon” is information in a prescribed format that is used in managing a wireless network. The beacon allows an AP to alert all client devices within range of its presence, this in turn notifies a client device of the one or more APs with which it may associate in order to connect to the wireless network. Based on the beacon, among other factors, the client device can determine the most appropriate AP to which it should associate. For example, the client device may determine to which AP it should associate based on a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) as measured for a beacon. Other data may also be included within a beacon describing various statistics about the network to each client device within range, such as the particular capabilities of each AP from which the client device received the beacon.
Various problems have arisen with wireless communication networks regarding the distribution of information from an AP. Two such problems include attempting to scale the transmission of information from an AP to client devices within range of the AP and the handling of the lack of interoperability of various devices connected to the network. For example, an AP may distribute information to all client devices associated with the AP via a broadcast message transmitted at regular intervals in addition to the transmission of the beacon. However, this strategy of distributing information requires unnecessary overhead and excessive traffic on the network. As the network grows, the scalability issue is magnified. In addition, one or more client devices connected to the network may process transmissions differently than another client device, therefore requiring transmissions to be in various formats. For example, a first client device running Apple® iOS may process a received transmission differently than a second client device running Android™ Jelly Bean. Therefore, an AP distributing information via a broadcast transmission may be required to send the same transmission in various formats causing excessive traffic the network.
Current approaches for modifying the information distributed via a beacon require the manufacturer of the APs to modify computer software of the APs connected to the network. This further requires that, once the modifications have been made to the computer software, the APs on the network be updated with the modified computer software. For example, computer software may include a binary file such as a device driver of the AP. Typically, this requires that the APs be disconnected from the network. Therefore, currently, a modification of the information distributed via a beacon is a process that is disruptive to the network.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.